


What is Plucked Will Grow Again

by lexicale



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-29
Updated: 2012-09-29
Packaged: 2017-11-15 06:04:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/523952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lexicale/pseuds/lexicale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a town, somewhere, that hasn't seen spring for sixty years. Dean wants Sam back, and Sam wants nothing at all.</p><p>A cross over between SPN and The Last Unicorn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What is Plucked Will Grow Again

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure exactly what ep this'd take place after. But Dean knows that Sam has no soul, and they've been working for Crowley to get it back. So I guess sometime after 6x08 but before 6x10.
> 
> Written for the prompt found [here](http://wanttobeatree.livejournal.com/943667.html?thread=8152371#t8152371).

_"What is plucked will grow again,_  
What is slain lives on,  
What is stolen will remain--  
What is gone is gone." 

\- Old Age, _The Last Unicorn_ , Peter S. Beagle

\-----

Dean's never put a lot of stock in dream interpretation.

People talk about things in their dreams being _symbols_ and _metaphors_ and shit. It sounds like a whole bunch of hokum to him.

So what if sometimes he dreams about Hell or his Dad -- he also sometimes dreams about really spicy hot wings and Sam being a talking hamburger.

Not everything is significant.

Still, even Dean has to admit, tonight might be the exception to the rule.

"It needs to be _over_ ," Sam says, and Dean knows, absolutely, that this isn't the Sam he's traveling with. This Sam is both simpler and more complex by turns, something ephemeral that the emotionless partner of his could never understand. 

"Over?" Dean asks, not understanding. Usually in dreams he has no idea he's dreaming, and everything seems normal until he wakes up. He doesn't _know_ he's dreaming right now, but he has a _strong suspicion_ , and nothing seems to make sense, Sam and the world a confused jumble of events that either haven't happened yet or will never happen.

"What you've been doing," Sam says softly, hands in his lap, shaggy hair laying messy around his cheeks. He's sitting on the edge of a fence, and Dean can hear the rhythmic triple beat of a canter behind him, hooves meeting hard packed soil. "Every little thing, Dean."

"I don't understand."

"It's always you and me. Always gonna be. And I need you to save me."

"Stop talking in goddamned riddles. Sam," Dean pushes, voice needy. He takes a step closer, hands seizing Sam's shoulders, desperate. "Sam, tell me what's happening. Tell me _how_ to save you. You gotta know I been tryin'."

"I can't do it myself. I need you to help me." Sam smiles wanly, like it's some secret joke, something funny and sad and twisted. "I want it to be you...This is the way you can save me. Please. I'm asking you to _save me_."

The words are hauntingly familiar, but Dean doesn't know why, can't remember exactly where he's heard them before. There's a flash of sense memory, a gun being pressed into his hands, metal smooth and dead against his palm, Sam's face messy with tears and pleading. 

"I know you can," Sam continues, insistent and so _alive_ , not like a ghost, not like a dream, despite the nonsense talk. Dean can hear the hooves approaching behind him, heavy and foreboding, one-two-three, one-two-three, and the ground seems to shake.

Dean opens his mouth to shout, to ask, to discover, but before he can the curtains shift, South Dakota sunlight spilling in and curling under Dean's eyelids and he's awake again. 

His brother is up, always awake, sitting at the little breakfast table, a tray with some coffee and muffins on it.

"Hey. Ready?" he asks, and Dean just grunts.

\-----

It's not a town Dean's ever been to, in his many criss-cross pattern trips across the United States. It's not even a state he frequents -- not because there aren't nasty things gathered furtively in the brush and undergrowth. Those're always there.

No, Dean rarely goes to Wyoming because there's not even half a million people there, and whatever's out in the night doesn't run into the few and far between humans that wander the Midwestern landscape often, and when it does, the reports are quiet enough that Dean barely ever gets wind of them. He's not even certain how Sam heard about this, except it's kind of a Sam thing. Old Sam, that is. His Sam. The Sam that looked down his nose at guns and cars and hunting but secretly lit up when researching small town lore. This is the kind of story he'd love.

But this Sam probably just heard of it because he doesn't sleep and he's always got his ear to the ground, more than just aware of the world around him.

"I don't get it," Dean says over breakfast, cutting into runny eggs with his fork. They're four hundred miles outside of Wyoming, coming down from Bobby's and Sam is telling him about their next case. Dean is sinfully grateful to be doing anything that has nothing to do with Crowley, Hell, angels or demons. He knows he shouldn't be. He should be eager to seek Crowley out. After all, Crowley is their only hope of getting Sam back and Dean wants that more than he can even express(not that he'd _try_ ). But he's been a tool too long -- first his Dad's, then Heaven's, and he's not eager to leap back into anyone's hand. 

He wants Sam's soul back so bad it burns, but he's always been good at running, and a part of him wants to just keep running in the other direction until he forgets.

The worst part is that he knows Sam'd let him.

"What don't you get?" his little brother asks, eating a double cheeseburger at eight in the morning, one hand grazing lightly over his laptop. His eyes are on the screen.

"How is bad weather our business?"

"Sixty years of winter isn't bad weather, Dean." 

The way Sam says it, the way his voice wanders over the words and falls on _Dean_ with that slight tinge of exasperation is achingly familiar. Dean knows it's pointless but his eyes still dart to Sam's face, looking for signs of the brother he knew, but Sam isn't exasperated. Sam is just reading whatever it is on the computer. Sometimes his voice will dip and weave in the familiar patterns, but Dean's begun to learn that it's not purposeful. It's just muscle memory.

"So they get a lot of snow. So what?" He pushes his plate away from him, not particularly hungry, the yellow yokes running like pus across his plate.

"It's not just some snow." Sam finally looks up, pushing his laptop shut and taking his burger in both hands to take a huge bite out of it, big jaw working for a few seconds before he swallows. "This town has been in perpetual winter for sixty years -- no spring, no summer. Not even a flower. The snow never melts, the trees never bloom."

"It's Wyoming. Who knows why shit happens in Wyoming. It's a mystery to us all."

"Everywhere else around the town has seasons. Fifty miles by fifty miles. There's a circle of land out there that spring just skips right over, while everywhere else on all sides turns green. Doesn't that make you curious?"

Dean raises an eyebrow, looking across the table with that same stupid hope that always falls flat on its face.

"Does it make _you_ curious?" he returns, sounding snarky but still wanting to hear Sam say _'yes'_ , say _'Dean, we have to figure this out.'_

But instead Sam says: "No," and he takes a sip of beer that he bought from a 24 hour package store and brought with him into the diner. "But it's something to do."

\-----

Lapland, Wyoming is just a road -- a single road with a few stores tucked into two story buildings with a bar and grill at the corner, not more than an hour or two from Bighorn National Forest. There are a couple of roads leading out of town to the homes of the 548 residents, split apart and separate with all the space in the world.

Dean wonders if more people lived here before the snow came to stay, and he has to admit, it's pretty dramatic. Once minute they were driving across Wyoming, green forests on either side, and then two miles later they were passing snowy fields and woods, the world more silent and still than it was before. It's April, and the air's still a little cool, sure, but nothing like this. Like they'd just driven into February and the dead of winter had hushed all life. 

The central road has been salted but Dean still has to take it at ten miles an hour. The Impala has a wide wheel base, but she isn't built for handling, not like this, and the ice he can _see_ has got nothing on the ice he can't. 

People are shuffling up and down the thin sidewalks, thick coats pulled around them, heads turned down to try and protect their noses from the wind that Dean can't feel but can observe, the way signs shake and shudder on the store fronts, the way hair and hoods fly as if tugged by invisible hands. The image triggers a fuzzy recollection of some small town, not dissimilar to this one, tucked into some corner of America that Dean only half remembers. All he's sure of was that Sam was eight and he was twelve and it was Christmas. He remembers a large tree in the town square and the mottled shine of colored lights hung from the lampposts and walkways.

But there's no Christmas here.

This isn't a winter wonderland. There are no children playing, no snowmen being built. There's no choirs or cheery lights in the windows. The snow is grim and subdued, the color of the world leeched out of it and leaving only muted shades of brown and grey. The sky is covered and overcast, clouds like sentinels keeping the sun out, and whatever fight it put up sixty years ago, it's not fighting now. The light that spills through is even and uncolored, more of an illumination than a shine. Something more than night, but not quite day.

Dean's still not convinced it's their kind of job. He'd be feeling pretty down after living sixty years in this. Maybe it's just like the article he looked up on The Weather Channel website says: a meteorological anomaly, people refusing the leave the life they know, even if the world fifty miles away from their front yards is full of more color than they've ever seen before. 

It was something he could never understand, as a teenager -- why people didn't want to leave. He couldn't imagine having to live more than one year in the same place. It seemed like something awful, like a punishment. Now he knows the road is just as much of a cage.

They stop in at the bar and grill for dinner, Sam doing what he can to gather information. He's not as good at it as he used to be, and Dean flirts casually with the waitress. Nothing untoward. It's been weeks since Lisa broke up with him but he's still not ready to leap into bed with someone else, even if his libido kind of wants to. At thirty two, he's still kind of a horn dog, but not as much as he used to be, and the idea of doing anything with anyone else hurts right now.

Still, no harm in being friendly, and besides, it works better than Sam's incessant, unfeeling questions he fires at people as if their life depends on it -- even if, sometimes, it _does_ depend on it.

"Oh, it's always been like this," Melissa replies as she sets down his steak, a muffled warning about the hot plate as he reaches out for his utensils. 

"Were you born here?"

"Pretty much everyone was born here," she says with that kind of sad smile, almost sheepish. She flips vertical the tray she was carrying, now that it's empty, and holds it to her chest. "People don't really move _to_ Lapland. They just move away."

"It's gotta be pretty tough." Dean leans back against the booth seat, keeping his body language casual. He ignores the steak, despite how hungry he is, and just takes a sip of his beer. "I mean, do you ever get sick of the snow?"

"I guess..." Melissa gets a bit of a far away look, her eyes flicking to the window at the end of his booth, looking out at the pale white world. "When I was in high school, my friends and I used to drive out of town. Just go up to Story to spend the day there. Most of the time we just hung out at the CVS or something." She laughs, a musical sound with sour notes. "There's not a lot to do out here, as you'd imagine."

"So why don't you move?" he asks, quirking an eyebrow. "Whole big world out there. You know Florida? I hear they don't get _any_ snow." He flips on a little charm, smirking that smirk and joking around, quick and harmless. Here, it doesn't matter if the jokes are stupid or lame, and it doesn't matter if Sam rolls his eyes(like he never does, anymore) or if Sam huffs and pouts(like he's forgotten how to), because Melissa's gonna laugh, and she does. They always do.

Here, now, Dean's just the mysterious outsider, good looking and just different enough to be refreshing. He knows how to play it.

"I don't know. I don't know what else I'd do, outside of Lapland..." She shrugs a little, and then her whole body goes still. Dean fights the urge to sit up straighter and he sees her eyes locked on something out the window. He follows that line, tracing it down to figure out what it is she's looking at, but Dean just sees a little old lady on the other side of the street, making her way through the cold in one of those thick, old lady skirts, with thick, old lady pantyhose. It's not much of anything. Not the creepy guy skulking around or vicious monster he'd expected.

He looks back to Melissa, ready to ask her what's up, and is surprised to see two perfect tear tracks running down her cheeks.

"Hey," he questions, breaks her reverie. "You alright?" He almost reaches for her, but then she snaps out of it, becomes animate once more.

"Oh, god," she says, laughing with embarrassment, lifting a hand to wipe at her cheeks. It's like nothing happened and she seems fine, just as fine as she was before. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to-- Anyways. I swear, I'm not a freak."

"I know," he says, and this is the moment that he'd reach up, put a hand on her elbow, nice and easy and inviting, but he doesn't. Doesn't want to. "You're not. I'm just--...Are you alright?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Please, don't worry." She waves one hand, the other still holding onto her tray. "It's nothing. I don't even really _know_ \-- It's just, ever since I was a little girl, whenever I see Ms. Ostrand, I just... I don't know."

"You cry?"

She blushes, skin turning a little pink under the smeared moisture of her tears.

"Well, when you say it like _that_ , I sound like a complete weirdo."

"You're no weirdo, Melissa," he replies, voice softer than he really meant it to be. He wants to let her know that she's not crazy, that he's heard a lot crazier than this, but he'll just freak her out. Already that soft tone of voice makes her give him a look -- that considering look that people get when they begin to wonder about how they missed the fact that he's a psycho -- and he covers with a quick smile, tipping his mostly empty bottle. "I'm almost out here, sweetheart. Mind getting me another?"

Melissa relaxes, normalcy rushing back in and Dean knows she'll have forgotten all about that odd moment by tomorrow. Just another strange stranger traveling through.

\-----

Their first night in Lapland, tucked into two queen beds at the local bed and breakfast, Dean has a dream.

He dreams he is coming to Sam. The snow is deep and the air cold, but Sam is waiting, the most meaningless need in his eyes. 

Dean has seen them all -- the innocent, the chaste; the maniacal and the demented. He has seen every side of humans because they are finite. They can only be so many things, and Dean has lived for age upon age, eon upon eon. It is more than enough time to know every side a mortal beast can ever have.

But Dean is more than that. He is more pure than even the purest of humans, fiercer than even the most savage killer. He is selfless and yet still untamed, and can only ever be caught by a human, because they are the only creatures in all the world that know how to cheat.

And Dean cannot see the lie, or the trick, no matter how many times it is played, because it is too foreign to his nature.

He can only ever be caught by unfair means.

Except he's never seen a human like this, so empty of deception. Sam is as mortal as any creature that ever wondered what it means to die, but he isn't like other humans. He can lie with words, but words are always lies, incapable of ever truly capturing anything. He can lie with gestures, but they are nothing more than figments -- fleeting attempts of a poor body to express something greater. But he cannot lie as humans do. He cannot make himself believe the world to be anything other than what it is. He cannot hope, or despair. He cannot conceive of the greatest lies: the lies that humans convince themselves are true.

When Sam holds out his hand, Dean begins to walk towards him, as he has a million times before this, to a million other hands, and always with the bright and clear belief that it is only a hand and nothing more. Always with the purest knowledge that only truth is real and all the world is permanent.

Knowing only the sweetness of being himself.

Dean wakes up in the middle of the night crying, and he doesn't know why.

\-----

The first morning in Lapland, they head downstairs, unable to escape the customary breakfast part of a bed and breakfast. Dean always hated joints like these, wasn't up for socializing that early in the morning, having people poking into his business under the guise of small talk. Sam used to love it, used to always ask to stay at little joints like this, where credit card fraud was hard to swing.

They didn't have much of a choice this time. Lapland's not big enough for the kind of dives they're used to. It's not like they have a big tourist economy, and the last motel shut down over twenty years ago.

The Haugens run the B&B out of their home, and Dean has to admit the hot, home cooked breakfast is a big upside, even if it comes with a hefty side of awkward conversation.

They go over the normal things: what do you do for a living, where do you come from, where's your family from. A slew of questions that Dean and Sam can't answer. Dean fields it, throwing out lies and half truths, peppering his answers with simple little stories to make them ring true. Sam tries to interject sometimes, but Dean keeps it to a minimum. Sam only lies when it suits him now, not caring if people think he's a freak. People distrust him instinctively.

Dean wonders if there's some preternatural thing that humans have, an ability to sense the _lack_ in Sam, the space where there should be soul.

And then Dean wonders if, after his time in Hell, he's missing that sense, because Sam doesn't act like his brother any more, but it still took Dean far too long to figure it out.

"You get a lot of folks through here?" Dean asks once they've finished eating, conversational and casual. He's stuffed, which is no easy feat. The scrambled eggs and thick cut bacon fried crisp, freshly grated hash browns and a stack of golden toasted bread with homemade preserves sit heavy in his stomach, making him feel lazy and content, and just the right amount of nauseous.

"Not so much," Mrs. Haugen replies, regret in her voice. "My grandparents started this place, and I inherited it from my parents. They used to do alright. You know, not many came through here as it was -- we're not exactly on the big truck routes -- but still. There's no denying that we don't do as well as my parents did."

"Really? You'd think you guys could really capitalize on that 'Christmas in July' thing." Dean smiles, joking, and he sees the couple laugh politely, but it's strained. The winter has taken its toll, and the Haugens are middle aged, but definitely not sixty. They don't remember a Lapland that wasn't trapped in eternal snow.

"It looks like it's more than just the weather that's bothering you," Sam pipes up, blunt and Dean winces. The Haugens' eyes dart over to him, wearied, like the overcast skies and white grey world outside has sunk into their bones, leeched all the color out of them. Melissa had laughed and smiled, but Dean can't deny that she had that same quality to her, as if she'd already given up.

They didn't have the energy and will left to run away.

"It's...hard," Mrs. Haugen admits, curling her worn out fingers around the mug of her cocoa, eschewing coffee but still needing that warm morning drink. "They say it's an anomaly, you know? Some kind of weather depression...I'm not clear on the details, but they say that it'll clear, eventually."

 _Yeah, right,_ Dean thinks. _Because things we deal with always clear up on their own._

It sometimes amazes him what people can look past -- people going missing, mutilated bodies, apparitions moving through their homes, men that can change their shape. He guesses it's just something people have to do, to get through their lives.

He can tell Mr. Haugen feels the same way as him though, the look he shoots his wife, but Dean sees that she's hanging onto that thin thread, that willful ignorance, like a lifeline, and he doesn't want to take it away from her.

Sam has no such concerns.

"You look like you don't believe that," he says, leaning forwards on the table as he looks at Mr. Haugen, eyes direct and unwavering -- an intense stare that Dean knows is creepy, but he can't do anything to warn Sam off without drawing attention.

Mr. Haugen clears his throat and looks down at his cleared plate. His wife lets out a breath and gets up, smiling strained.

"Let me get these things out of the way. You boys want any more?"

"Oh no," Dean waves a hand, begging off. "Couldn't fit in another bite. Not even a wafer thin mint," he jokes, trying to keep the atmosphere light.

She just offers him that polite smile, a look to her that says she has no idea who Mr. Creosote is, picking up their dirty crockery and carrying it back to the kitchen. Sam is still staring at Mr. Haugen and Dean bumps his knee against his brother's underneath the table. Sam glances over at him and Dean tries to give him the _'Shut up, you idiot, you're gonna spook the natives'_ look, which mostly just involves widening his eyes and pursing his lips. Sam doesn't get it.

The stupid soulless bastard turns back to their host.

"Mr. Haugen, I got the feeling you know more about this than you wanted to let on."

The man makes a gruff noise, put a little on edge by Sam's tone and Dean can't blame the man.

"What my brother _means_ is," Dean jumps in. "We're interested in the story of this town. If you wouldn't mind sharing with us... But if it's not something you want to talk about, we totally understand."

Mr. Haugen glances at the kitchen door, then pats his front pocket until he pulls out a pack of cigarettes, going back in for a small box of matches. After he places the cigarette on the edge of his lips, held there by moisture, he flicks the tip of the match over the sandpaper glued to the side of the matchbox, letting out that small burst of sulfur scent that gets Dean's hackles up, his whole body having a Pavlovian reaction to the smell after all these years.

He tries to steady himself, watching the flicker of flame as the man lights his cigarette before shaking the light out. He takes a slow drag, the stick held in between his index and middle finger, but at the bottom, lodged against the webbing at the base. It's the way that Pastor Jim used to hold his cigarettes when he'd light them up behind the church on rare occasions, a sheepish smile and talk about God's little indulgences.

"It's not a...thing, mind," he finally starts, awkwardly. Dean stays quiet, lets the man have a second to collect his thoughts, and thankfully his giant robot of a brother does the same. "Jus' something my mom used to talk about, when we were kids. Just a...fairy tale, I guess."

Dean gestures with his hand, one careless motion across the edge of the table, half a shrug, as if to say: _'It's alright. We're all men here.'_

Mr. Haugen seems to take it as some kind of permission, taking one more long drag before lowering his hand and speaking, smoke tunneling out of his nostrils in two straight streams.

"My mom used to say that when she was a kid, she saw a white deer. Said it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. She and her friend used to see it in the woods, and it'd come up to them, like it had no idea that it should be scared of people. She always got this look on her face, when she talked about it...Like she was still back there, like she was looking at the deer at that very moment, and her whole face jus'...changed." He huffed, more thing wisps bursting out on his breath. "Now, my mother was a wonderful lady -- pillar of the community and kind to even the worst men, but she wasn't what you'd call a handsome woman. But...when she got that look, talkin' about it, she was beautiful enough to break your heart. My dad used to say that listening to her tell that story was when he fell in love with her." 

He glances at the two brothers, a faint look of challenge in his eyes, the way a lot of older Midwestern men got when they said something they thought was too soft. Like Dean or Sam might call him a pansy and laugh. He takes another short pull on the cigarette and Dean puts his elbows on the table, lacing his fingers together, speaking up again.

"What does this have to do with the snow?"

"My mother used to say..." He hesitates, looking down at the slowly smoking cigarette, paper curling slowly as it burns. "She told me that spring could never come here, because this land was cursed."

Dean remembers the last spit of cursed land they dealt with, surviving a night of bees and locust and just trying to keep one family from getting devoured. 

All you can do is get out of the way, the words echo in his head.

"Why would she say that?"

"She said that someone killed the deer. 'Murdered it', she used to say." He huffs a laugh. "Dunno how you can _murder_ a _deer_ , but. She said that its death disgraced the land. Cursed us to live in this never ending blizzard."

"I know it seems odd but...any chance we could talk to your mom about this?" Dean realizes how weird he sounds, tries to laugh it off. "We're really into...you know. American folklore. And things."

He's not as good at spinning the lies like Sam was. Sam always knew exactly what people needed to hear to be at ease, like he could read it off their face. Dean's the best they have, though, now.

Mr. Haugen glances back and forth between them, then takes a breath, pulling out the cigarette pack to snuff his out on the plastic, before his wife can return to the room.

"She passed a few years ago."

"Sorry to hear that."

"You boys have plans for the day?" Mrs. Haugen asks, walking back into the room as she dries her hands on a dishrag. She looks like she might well ask them to let her show them around.

"Oh, yeah -- gonna go look around, check things out. Maybe get into a snowball fight." He grins, getting up from the table to forestall any unfortunate invitations. Sam gets up as well, thankfully following his lead. "We'll be sure to get back before it's too late."

Dean hates having a curfew, but that's the nature of B&Bs. Sam thanks Mrs. Haugen for the food, working his way out around the many empty chairs. Dean makes to follow him, but Mr. Haugen's voice stops him short at the doorway.

"Dean." 

Dean turns, glancing over his shoulder at the older man, brows raised in question.

"...You can talk to my mother's old friend if you want. She's still around. Lives just outside the main strip. Deborah Ostrand."

Dean pauses, his mind flashing back to Melissa the waitress and the tracks of tears on her cheeks, but nods in thanks, making his way after Sam and out into the harsh whip of winter.

\-----

It's the second time Dean's heard of Deborah Ostrand. Work the job long enough and you stop believing in coincidences.

It doesn't take but a couple of minutes to find her address, and 10AM finds them at the end of a long driveway off the road, Dean's face pressed up against cold glass. He has one hand over his eyes, trying to shadow his reflection enough to peer into the darkened living room. Lots of old boxes, odds and ends, disorganized knick-knacks -- what Dean's come to expect from the living rooms of the elderly. Keepsakes and reminders of a life mostly past.

His breath fogs the glass, and it's hard to see anything, but he can't make out anything that looks like a clue. Sam is standing behind him, hands in his pockets and watching the snow fall.

"We could just break in," he offers, and Dean pushes himself up straight, dusting his hands of nothing.

"Nah. We gotta interview her -- we're not gonna find the info we need in her stuff. We might as well hit up the local history, see what we can. Come back tomorrow morning." Time and experience has given Dean the tools to know what's what, in these cases. Sometimes breaking in yields information, but when it comes to asking people for their first hand knowledge, that's not likely to be tucked away in some box somewhere. No, for this, they're going to need Deborah Ostrand in person.

They drive back into town, Dean's heart only stopping _once_ this time, as the Impala shifts uneasily on the icy street. The library is a small, two story building, and Dean only has to look at it from the parking lot to know they're not going to find much there. He's not much of a reader, but he's been in enough local libraries to know how much space is taken up just by law books. 

Sam still does most of the research. It used to be that Sam was the guy for books and Dean was the guy for shooting -- these days, Sam's better at both, and Dean feels more than just a little useless, leaning up against a bookshelf, watching Sam make his way through the microfiche. Back then, it would have damaged Dean's pride something fierce, but these days it's just another old regret, one in a pile of a million others. He'd gladly have given up all those carefully honed skills if he could have been a better dad than his own.

Turns out, now he has neither.

He finds a quarter in his pocket and fiddles with it for awhile, trying to get it to trip over his knuckles, a trick he's never quite been able to master, despite all his time spent in bars.

"You know," Sam says, a few hours in. He leans back in his chair, then presses his hands against the back of his head with a grunt, back cracking in a few places before he goes lax. "This is going to sound stupid, but I have a suspicion."

"Man, stupid is our middle names." Dean pauses, glances up. "Are our middle names." He frowns -- that's still not right. "Our middle names are stupid?"

" _Any_ ways." Sam tosses an arm over the back of the chair, twisting to look at Dean. "I found some reports on that year. 1949 -- before the winter set in. It seems like everything was good that year. More than. The town was prospering. A lot of trade came through, and the farmers were having the best year that anyone could remember. They were even looking to host the annual county fair here, the next year. Then winter came and just...never left."

"So something happened." Dean shrugs, shoulder shifting under the leather of his jacket. Despite the icy temperatures, Dean's stuck with his usual wardrobe -- not like he has any heavy winter clothes to begin with. He doesn't do shorts, and he sure as hell doesn't do parkas. "Some kind of spell? Gotta be, to get that kind of prosperity, right?"

"Not necessarily. The white deer got me thinking..." Sam glances back at the microfiche. "There's this one story in here about the fair, and what the locals won in it the year before. It's just a sentence or two, but there was one farmer who claimed he would have won if he'd been able to catch the white horse that he'd seen around his property, all through spring."

"Suspicious," Dean agrees, his mind running through the options but not coming up with anything immediately. "So what you thinkin'?"

"Unicorn," Sam replies, without any hint of irony.

Dean gives his brother a second to make it clear he's joking. The second passes, and Dean is will within his Brother Rights to laugh in Sam's face. So he does.

It's not as good when Sam doesn't get all ruffled and pissy. What good is mocking your little brother if he just sits there and waits for you to finish?

"You're kidding, right?" Dean finally asks, leaned over with his hands on his knees. He's giving Sam an incredulous look.

"There is a report involving unicorns in the journals."

"Dad's journal?" Dean frowns, brow furrowing as his expression turns serious. He's read that thing cover to cover a million times -- definitely no unicorns in there. No angels either. So there's that.

"No, the Campbell journals."

Dean manages to keep himself from groaning. He never thought he'd think sour of anything of their mom's, but he can't stand her fucking family. Sam was always the guy who wanted to know the _Truth_ , with a capital _T_. Who wanted to be let in on all the secrets and pissed off when he was kept in the dark. Dean? Dean would like nothing more than to go back to the time when he _didn't_ know. Especially all the things he knows now about the Campbells. Sometimes ignorance _was_ bliss.

"They've been keeping them for decades," Sam continues, either unaware or uncaring of Dean's distaste. "Generations."

"Bully for them," Dean mutters.

"There was one by a great uncle of ours. His little sister had just turned twelve and was starting to shadow him on hunts. They were investigating a series of hexings and strange events in New York when the girl experienced a number of sightings, describing a slender creature with a single, spiral horn coming from its forehead. The hunter was dubious, but he had her wait while he stayed crouched with a gun. When the creature came out of the woods, he says that all he saw was a white mare, but that it was the most elegant creature he'd ever seen. It walked over to his sister and lay its head in her lap. She tried to rope it, but it threw off the rope and vanished, faster than he could even take the shot. The journal says they never saw the thing again. The next day was Black Tuesday."

"Like...door-buster specials?"

"That's Black _Friday_."

"Oh."

"Black Tuesday was the crash of the stock market in 1929."

"So, a _unicorn_ caused the Great Depression?"

"We've seen weirder," Sam shrugs.

"We have?" Dean raises an eyebrow, challenging Sam to name a one. To be honest, though, he kind of doesn't care. His mind is still on this anonymous great uncle of theirs, taking his twelve year old sister out onto a hunt -- using her as _bait_. But the minute he thinks that, he flashes to Sam's face, twelve and uncertain, scared and trying to trust, walking out into a cemetery with nothing but their dad's stern assurances at his back. 

Then Dean thinks of Ben, only one year younger. How he'd kill anyone that made Ben put himself in danger like that. Just a freaking _kid_.

Guilt isn't an unfamiliar thing to Dean, but it still feels fresh and new, looking at Sam now as an adult -- a soulless wreck of a human being, and Dean played some part in taking him from a perfect little kid to this.

"In the legends, unicorns were magical beings that brought peace and prosperity with them -- in the twenties, America was living the high life. The economy was booming. Everyone was happy."

"And you think something out of a Lisa Frank wet dream caused that?"

"I don't think that real unicorns would be like the modern conception of them."

"Oh god," Dean groans, looking heavenward. "We're talking about _real unicorns_." He's losing a testicle _right now_.

"In medieval Europe, the unicorn was a fierce beast, capable of killing men with its horn. It was supposed to be so stunning that even grown men would fall down and weep at the slightest glance -- and that wherever it walked, eternal spring followed. Deadly, but awe inspiring."

Sam's voice should be excited, should be involved in that little geek-out he goes through when discussing myths and legends. There's no joy there now. Just the rote facts -- words spilling out, memorized from text, none of that enthusiasm. Sam touches books like they're just made of paper, but Dean remembers the way his brother used to clutch them, hold them; read every word with his lower lip pinched between his teeth and his eyes feverish. His first true love.

Sam probably doesn't even remember that love, now, what it meant to feel it.

Dean used to love teasing the hell out of Sam about it. He's not sure that Sam would be the same, even if they did get his soul back, because this isn't actually new. Sam lost his love of secret knowledge and quiet academia long before he fell into Hell. The world beat it out of him, unrelenting.

"Alright. Fine." Dean holds up both hands in a position of surrender. "So we're hunting a badass, manly unicorn. Whatever. What do we do next? You got any virgins sitting around?"

"No." Sam turns back to the desk, putting away the materials he pulled out. "But what's happening here isn't exactly the normal MO for a unicorn anyways. We have to find out what happened in this town in 1949, and the only person who knows that is Deborah Ostrand."

With that said, they don't have anything else to do for the day. They end up back at the bar and grill, attempting to glean new leads from the other patrons at first. When that yields nothing, they play a game of darts, impressing the locals with their skills but still head home early.

The bar clears out not too long after nightfall, morose faces slacked with alcoholic anesthetic wandering through the doors.

\-----

In his dreams, Dean sees Sam kneeling in the snow. He's reaching his hand out to a white stag, arm extended as far as it can go, and there's the strangest expression on his face. His long fingers stretch out, snowflakes drifting lazily past them to settle silently on the drifts.

The woods are quiet, preternaturally still, with only the steady crunch of the hart's steps, its cloven hooves pressing down and penetrating the virginal perfection of the snow. Sam just breathes, short puffs of steam floating out of his parted lips. The moment hangs empty, and the stag stops. Dean isn't breathing at all.

Sam reaches forward more, fingertips so close, and the stag stretches its neck out, pristine white snout almost touching. It seems inevitable and Dean can't look away. Then everything breaks, and the hart rears up, letting out a piercing sound unlike anything Dean's ever heard. It is the shrill cry of a bird at sea, echoing and lovely, the sound of fire rushing down the mountainside, purifying everything in its wake.

Then the hart plunges its horns into Sam's chest, straight through like a sword. There is a scarlet flash of blood, bright and vivid as it arches through the air, landing on the snow in stark contrast to its pallor.

Dean's eyes dart back to the stag and he sees, as if through warped glass, that there is only one horn. A single, perfect horn, speared through Sam's heart.

Dean wakes with the alarm blaring, feeling as if he never slept at all.

\-----

There's a serenity in winter that Dean can appreciate, despite his love of hard rock and loud women. Sure, after a couple of weeks all he sees is _cold_ and _wet_ and _the undercarriage, Sam! Look what this stuff doing to my baby!_ , but at first glance, snow is pretty great. The way it blankets the world in white, bringing a dizzy silence with it, slowing everyone down until it's like the planet just stopped rotating. All the people are gone, tucked inside their houses and unwilling to come out, and everything goes quiet. Just the call of distant birds and the susurrus of half melted snow dripping from tree branches.

Dean's used to chaos, so used to it that he's learned to love it, but for a couple weeks, yeah, he likes winter.

But there's no serenity in Lapland. Winter isn't a bad storm or even a hard season for them. It's every day. It's spring and it's summer and it's fall. It's the fourth of July and Christmas and it's sixty years long, and that means that life goes on. It has to. People can't call out of work cause the roads are icy, kids can't stay home from school because it's snowing. And the clouds obscure the sun, strangle and drown its light. Serenity faded into monotony a long time ago, and monotony into a listless existence, devoid of more than just hope: devoid of will or thought. 

The dark hush of winter has been here so long that it isn't winter anymore. It is the cold march forwards, to an ever receding goal.

"Sixty years..." Deborah Ostrand murmurs, more to herself than to him and Sam. She's pouring tea for her guests, a small white tea pot in her wrinkled hands, fingers only just obscuring the rose painted on the side. The tea pours out hot and steaming, the liquid making a thick chuckle as it fills each cup. Her voice is firmer, louder when she speaks again. "Yes, that does sound about right."

They managed to corner her by arriving early in the morning, skipping out on breakfast with the Haugens. Dean's cold and hungry, sitting back on Deborah Ostrand's uncomfortable old couch, Sam sitting next to him.

"So, you can tell us what happened?" Sam asks, cold and direct. He's watching her, not suspiciously, but not with any aching understanding either, the kind of hang dog look that Dean is familiar with whenever Sam is presented with little old ladies with sad stories to tell. Sam has a small notepad in one hand and pen in the other, but he's not jotting down notes.

"Mm-hmm," Mrs. Ostrand hums noncommittally, setting down the teapot and carefully moving the tray. Dean can see the weight is a bit much for her, the tea weighing the old bamboo tray down, and her hands are shaking a little. He jumps up from the couch and goes to assist her, large hands firming over the edges with a mumbled 'Here, let me help you.'

She releases it to him, smiling.

"Thank you." She moves over to a beat up chair, a spot worn in the seat, and settles down before reaching out for her cup, holding it in her hands without drinking. She takes a second before continuing. "It's not a story I really tell..."

"Because people wouldn't believe you? 'Cause trust me, we--"

"No, it's not that." Her voice is almost wondering, as if it were a mystery, even to her. "I know that that should be the reason, that I should worry about that, but I don't. It's just that... It's something secret. Something _mine_." She smiles in that way that people with children smile to people without -- slightly condescending without meaning to be, in on some special knowledge that they treasure. "I'm not sure it could ever make sense, to someone who's never seen a unicorn."

Dean thought he'd laugh when the word came out, laugh like he had in the library because this whole thing was fucking _ridiculous_ and there _were no unicorns_ and this was clearly messed the fuck up. Except he didn't laugh, because whatever magic had touched Deborah Ostrand seemed to bleed through into them, as if her mystical beast were in the room with them, ancient and more beautiful than anyone with a soul could bare. And only Sam looked unaffected.

"So," Dean starts awkwardly, trying to fight away that crazy feeling, trying to get back to a place where all of this was clearly impossible. "You're...pretty certain you saw a unicorn."

He meant for it to come out as a question. He really did. It just didn't.

"Oh, yes," Deborah smiles over the edge of her teacup. Her face goes tender, her pupils larger now and faraway. Dean wonders if this is the look Mr. Haugen had been talking about. "I was sixteen years old at the time... I remember it quite clearly. My mother had been diagnosed with cancer three years earlier and the doctors were saying it would be any day. My father was staying with her in the hospital, and my little brothers and I were to stay with our grandmother."

She lowers her tea cup, smiling more to herself than at them.

"Her house was old but very well organized. It had a lovely sunroom, where she spent most of her time, and my little brothers were excited about staying there. They understood that our mother was sick, but they didn't _really_ understand it. Not enough to see our stay with grandma as anything other than a vacation." She lets out a sigh. "But _I_ understood. I knew exactly what was happening. No one would let me in to see my mother though. That's how it was, in those days. But I _certainly_ didn't want to stay cooped up, waiting for bad news, either, so Katherine -- my best friend -- and I spent the whole summer outside together. There was plenty enough forest out here for us two to explore."

She reached out, picking up a delicate saucer with her left hand, then settling back again, resting her teacup in its matching china.

"And that's where you saw it?" Sam asks.

Deborah nods, eyes centered on the tea, Dean wondering if she sees something there, some kind of divination because her face looks like a revelation. Except then she looks up, across the room at nothing, and her expression is exactly the same.

"For weeks we saw it on the other side of the Frederick's field. It... shone. There is no other word for it. It would flit through the air like a butterfly, playing in the wind eddies with its horn. Sometimes it would look at us but... most days we could have been a rock or a log for all it cared." Her fingers trace the edge of her cup, an absent motion. "It was the most beautiful summer... You would hardly believe. The fruit trees stayed in bloom all season, showering the roads in petals. It was hot and sticky but still, it seemed that everyone had something to celebrate. Even Katherine, a year older than me and whose beau saw fit to propose that August. Everyone was celebrating something. Everyone, it seemed, except my family."

The muscles under Deborah's eyes tighten, like an old sadness, warped and bitter. Her finger stills on the edge of her cup.

"I'm not exactly certain when the idea came to me... Maybe in the night. In a dream. Or perhaps I was fully awake and aware of what I was going to do. I had read a fairy tale once that said that the unicorn's horn could cure any poison -- and what was cancer but just a poison made by your own body?"

Dean knows where this story is going now. His hands clench a little, that instinctive reaction he gets when people mess with things way above their pay grade. When people stir the supernatural and make everyone else suffer.

"So what did you do?" Sam prompts her to continue. Deborah's eyes flick up to them.

"I went up the hill behind the field, up past the cliffside to where the forest would hide me from sight. The moon was... _so bright_. It seemed as if the sun were out and casting silver light instead of gold. I sat and I waited. For hours, I waited. I still remember the moment it came out of the woods." Her body goes still and Dean shivers when he realizes he can't see his reflection in her eyes. He sees woods and the shadows of trees, and the silver curve of the moonlight. "It stood there, more real than anything else in the world. I did not know if it would come to me, so I began to sing. Softly, at first. When it laid its head in my lap, I barely thought to breathe." Her eyelids drifted shut. "And then I picked up my knife."

Dean's jaw clenches.

"The horn was so solid, harder than rock. I thought that nothing could cut through it, but when I pushed the iron against the base it parted, like butter. Like a knife gliding through butter, I barely had to push at all."

"So, what?" Dean asks, surprised to feel his hands have curled into fists on his knees. "You ended up giving the horn to your mom? Grind some up in her tea?"

"Water, actually," Deborah replies, looking up and taking another sip of her drink. "But it worked. In a matter of weeks my mother had recovered."

"And how long did it buy her?"

"Buy her?" Deborah looks faintly surprised, then shakes her head. "Oh my, no. She's still alive. She lives in the assisted living community in Sheridan. One hundred and two years old...They say she's doing very well for her age."

"And what happened to the unicorn?" Sam's voice is still detached and calm. He doesn't seem to care too much about the idea of someone twisting the laws of nature like this, and Dean supposes he doesn't. Then again, Dean doesn't have room to judge, all the rules he's broken for his family.

"It died the minute the horn was cut." Deborah voice goes softer, eyelids lowered and sad for the first time in their conversation. "I didn't know what to do with the body. I just carried the horn with me out of the woods, just as the leaves began to turn and fall. The first snows came in November, and then...they never stopped."

"Because of the unicorn."

"Because spring will never come to land where a unicorn has died. Nothing can live there. It's like... the soil doesn't remember how to grow things anymore. Like the water has forgotten how to babble. Even the sun turns its face away to hide behind clouds, not wanting to look at us. The land has seen something eternal fall to ruin." She draws in a steady breath, then pushes herself up, putting her cup back down on the tray as she stands, and like a string snapping, the moment breaks. "Would you boys like some cookies?"

The change is sudden and unexpected, and Dean shakes his head, mind still wrapped up in the hunt, trying to undo what this woman has done. Sixty years of winter is a long time. 

"So what happens now? How do we _fix_ it?"

"Fix it...?" Deborah starts, looking as if he'd asked how to lasso the moon. "There's nothing that could undo something like this. Not unless something as ruined could be restored, and there's no such thing."

"And you don't mind," he can't help but ask, accusation barely veiled in his voice. "That you did this to the people here?"

Deborah stops, standing beside the coffee table. Her wool skirt hangs straight over her waist, grey hair in tight curls around her shoulders. She looks into him, straight into his eyes.

"What would you do?" she asks as she picks up the tray, wizened fingers wrapping around the edges. There is no shake to her hand. "If you could save your mother?"

The question, and the way she looks at him then, almost has him reaching for his gun, remembering his age old suspicion of witches, hearkening back to those darker days before Lisa and the sullied memory of his father softened his edges. But then the moment passes, and her eyes go soft and blank, lacking whatever insight she might have had. She looks as unknowing as any person, and just as lost, her eyes reflecting nothing but the dim grey of her living room.

\-----

The climb up the hill isn't a hard one, but it's freezing cold even though there's no wind, and Dean's doing what he can with his leather jacket, but it's not much. Sam might look like an idiot in his baby blue winter coat, but he's not a shivering idiot.

"This is the area," Sam declares. "Right up behind the fields, on the other side of the trees."

"Do we know what we're doing, once we find the damned thing?" Dean questions, his hands shoved deep in his jean pockets. His calves are damp, the denim having soaked up the moisture, but his boots are doing what they can to keep him from losing a toe. He begins to fan out from Sam, the two of them falling into their usual patterns of searching. Sam may be soulless, but they still work together well as a team -- Sam still remembers their rhythms.

"Salt and burn, maybe?" comes the reply, and Dean winces.

"Really? Salt and burn a _unicorn?"_

"You have any better ideas?"

" _No,_ " Dean replies testily, seeing a corridor of trees out of the corner of his eye. He glances down to the field below them, sees how the trees shelter this area, keep it private. He looks back to check on Sam's location, then walks into the hidden space. "Just seems... I mean, she _did_ say that it was the desecrating of the thing that caused the whole mess. You really think some rock salt and gasoline is going to make things better?"

"I don't think it'll make them worse."

"Things can always get worse," Dean mutters, but it's too low for Sam to hear. A year ago, Dean would have said that there was nothing worse than his little brother being locked in Hell. Now, though.

Now he knows different.

He's the one that ends up finding the corpse, and he's not surprised. It's been sixty years, so the remains are buried and invisible to any passerby. There's no way that Sam would spot it, and he doesn't have the soul that can _feel_ it like Dean can, and Dean does feel it. He stops in his tracks when he passes the spot, feels the fear and the cold creep in like never before, spiders setting up cobwebs in his joints. He feels it, tastes it in the air, something more unholy than a demon, something worse than the burn of Hell.

He turns, finally, and looks at a spot of unblemished snow, but he can see the disease there, hidden just under the surface.

"Sam," he calls out, then wanders over, hating his job as he kicks the snow aside, slowly uncovering the bones. The cold has preserved most of the flesh and skin, and the body hasn't been picked at by scavengers for some reason, leaving it whole but sunken. With no spring to grow leaves, and no autumn to make them fall, winter's had no chance to turn them into dirt, and the carcass is clean. Dean uncovers the skull, seeing the stub of the horn and curls his lip. 

He pushes himself to his feet. It is a mundane thing. A collection of bones. Whatever magic this creature once had was long gone.

"Found it," Dean says as Sam approaches. His brother is peering down at the corpse, then crouches down to get a closer look. It's just an inspection, nothing out of the ordinary. What Dean isn't expecting is the way that Sam's face shifts, something almost like wonder coming over him.

Dean blinks over the popped collar of his jacket, zipped up to cover his mouth.

Sam doesn't say anything, just stares down at the carcass, reaching one hand out, slowly, to touch the bare, dry jawbone, where the flesh has split, pads tracing along the line of it.

"Sam?" Dean asks, trying for his brother's attention.

"It's..." Sam pauses, then shakes his head. "Beautiful."

That's pretty much the last thing that Dean expected Sam to say. For starters, Sam doesn't have the _capacity_ to see or recognize beauty any more. He's incapable of it. Sam can still see sexy, can still want to bone, but he doesn't know what beauty is -- not like this. Recognizing something beyond just its physical parts.

But secondly, there's nothing beautiful here. Dean's never seen a unicorn, and still isn't 100% certain he wouldn't burst out laughing if he did, but there have been moments: seeing Melissa cry, Deborah's strange, unseeing gaze -- when he thinks he can almost feel it. And he understands. Only abstractly, but he understands the idea of its beauty.

This, though, is just a corpse. The ugliest corpse Dean's ever seen, in a lifelong career of looking at the lifeless.

"The hell you talkin' about, man?"

"You don't think it's lovely?" Sam asks, enough wonder in his voice that Dean doesn't even feel the compulsion to mock him for using the word 'lovely'.

"It's...bones, man. It's a carcass." And it's worse than that. Dean might be kind of a hick, but even he has to admit how seeing the bones makes him feel -- sick, like he's seen something pure defiled.

Somehow, without a soul, Sam can't see whatever it is that all these other people have, can't feel what Dean feels when he hears them talk about it, but Sam can see beauty here, in a cheaply discarded body.

"Nothing immortal can ever really fade," Sam replies, voice still distant. "Some things are...immutable. And I don't think I've ever seen something so..."

"Ruined?" Dean supplies, remembering all too clearly Deborah's words.

Sam looks back at him and says something then, something that still manages to catch Dean off-guard:

"Nothing can be as beautiful as when it's been ruined."

Dean doesn't reply to that, but it stops him cold, and he's looking down at Sam, at Sam's _ruined_ body, and he gets it. Right then and there. Sam's no different from this corpse. Something that used to be good, used to be worth something, brought down to nothing at all. It's not even because Sam doesn't have a soul. No, he was messed up long before then.

Pumped full of demon blood and scarred up from the inside.

Sam was something beautiful, once. It was a short time, just six months, but he was something beautiful. Something pure. But now he's just a mess of scar tissue and ephemeral parts stitched back together poorly. A wreck of what could charitably be called human, tainted and poisoned by demons all his life, warped and twisted by a revenge bent dad, crushed and pushed down by constant, cruel denial of self. And to top it all off, now he has no soul.

He is the abomination that the angels always said he was. Dean could always glimpse it, but never really see it, until now. It makes his stomach churn, and he misses his brother endlessly.

Only something so broken could see anything wonderful here.

"C'mon," Dean says tightly, trying to brush it all off. "Let's head back down to the car. M'freezin' my tits off."

Sam glances back at the bones, the rough cut where the horn used to be, then pushes himself to his feet. He and Dean make their way back down through the snow, nothing but silence between them.

\-----

Dean has dreamt of Stull Cemetery a hundred times since he showed up on Lisa's doorstep.

It's nothing unusual. Sure, they've decreased in frequency, but he's still not surprised when he dreams of it again, on their last night in Lapland.

Dean is standing on dead grass, and Sam is standing next to the great, sucking hole to Hell. The door to the cage. Sam's sneakered feet rest just on the edge, and next to him is a large white goat, its head held in Sam's hands, cradled to his chest.

It's a species that Dean vaguely remembers seeing on some Discovery special, bored and flicking around channels in some unremembered motel room. A marker or markhor or something like that. It has two horns twisting back from its forehead, and a dramatic curtain of hair hanging from its neck. Sam's fingers brush carefully through its soft white fur.

"Almost done, Dean," Sam says gently, resting his forehead against the goat's.

"It's _never_ done," Dean spits bitterly. It started when he was four and it's never stopped. 

_Just a few more months, kiddo,_ his father's promise echoes hollow. Just a few more months, then just a few more years, then Sam's entire fucking life. Then demons, then angels, then the apocalypse bearing down on them. 

Dean just wants to rest. For once, he gets it: everything Sam used to talk about, about it not being about normal, about it being about safety. He just wants some goddamned peace. But the apocalypse is over, and he's still chasing after shadows.

"It's just one more thing. I'm sorry that you have to do this. I'm... I miss you." Sam's voice is soft. Genuine.

Dean's head jerks up at that, used to nothing but riddles from dreams. Nothing but cryptic messages. But Sam is looking _straight at him_ and Dean feels cold rush through him at the sudden realized possibility.

"...Sam?" he asks, taking a stumbling step forward. "Sam? That's...Is it really you?" 

The world bursts into wild technicolor, and Dean can hear everything and this is _real._

"Holy shit," he gasps. "Holy shit, this is _real."_ This isn't just some dream. This is _Sam_. "Sam! Sam, what do I--How do I--?" He reaches out, wants to get to his brother, but this place is still dream enough that it's like he's running in quick sand.

Sam smiles, but it's sad.

"You can't. Not like you think. I need you to save me, but...not like you think. You have to stop _it."_

There's a way that Sam says 'it', like he's not talking about an action or a coming event. Rather, he's talking about something. Some _one_.

"I don't--"

"You promised, Dean. You _promised."_

"I know! Okay? I _know_ I promised, but Sammy, I can't just _leave_ you down there."

"No." Sam's voice echoes above the raging chaos of Hell below, and Dean shivers with it. "No. Not that promise, Dean."

There's a flash of memory, some creepy ass haunted motel in Connecticut, and Sam's grabby hands on either side of his face, pleading with him.

_'Dean, you're the only one who can do it. Promise. Dean, please. You have to promise me.'_

"Sam..." Dean's voice is broken, weaving over the too familiar name with too familiar hurt. 

The terrible rush and pull of Hell is increasing, getting worse.

"If I don't get the chance to tell you," Sam continues, that bittersweet smile on his face, far too accepting. "When it's over, after it's over... I love you. And I've missed you so much. And I'm sorry for... anything. Everything. And it's okay. It's okay. It's okay."

 _"Sam!"_ Dean's voice cracks, and he pushes even harder to get to the edge, to dive into Hell if he has to, no price too steep.

But Sam vanishes, pulled back down into the darkness. Dean cries out, but so does the white goat, rearing back onto its hind legs and issuing out a mournful cry, a clarion call, ringing and resonant. It's hooves are flashing brilliant bright, reflecting the sun and Dean is blinded. 

He stops in his tracks, hands coming up to cover his eyes as he gasps, and then he sits up in bed, heart going a mile a minute. 

It's thumping away in his chest, trying to crack his ribs, and he lifts a hand, presses it to sweat wet skin, as if his palm can hold that furiously pumping organ down, contain it. The room is dark, but there's no magic to the night. No lilting moonlight, no secrets in the shadows. There are no stars in Lapland, just as there is no sun during the day, just the ever present clouds. 

Dean looks over at the other bed and sees only rumpled sheets.

Sam is gone.

\-----

Dean forgets his flashlight, forgets his gun. He only has his bowie knife, grip clenched in his hand, and it's not like him. He doesn't forget things, not things like his gun. Not on nights like these: stumbling around after his brother, knee deep in snow drifts and pulled in by something other.

Dean knows just enough about the world to know when he's not fully in control of himself, but never enough to fight it. Hunter or not, he's still just a human.

He doesn't call out for Sam, because he knows where he'll find him. The walk up the hillside is easier this time, but the air colder with night. He thinks that dawn isn't too far away, but it's impossible to tell, the horizon nothing but flat darkness. The snow doesn't glow with light, doesn't shine under the moon. 

The forest is up ahead of him, and he struggles towards it, feet tripping up in the uneven terrain, obscured by the drifts, and when he makes it to a tree he pauses and hangs on for a moment, air chilling the cilia in his lungs. He leans his forehead against the bark.

Behind him, at the base of the hill, Lapland is silent and dark, nestled into the earth like a cavity in a tooth. Dean is shaking, and he pushes himself off of the tree, swaying, and then he goes, follows footprints he can no longer see and heads back to the corpse.

There is no where else that Sam would ever be.

When he finds his brother, Sam is kneeling in the snow, in that corridor of trees, the forest dark on either side of him. The snow is still falling, each flake twisting lazily through the air in front of Dean, all around him. He doesn't say anything, just stands there, and Sam looks up. His body shifts, and Dean can just barely make out his face in the darkness.

Dean grips his knife even tighter.

Sam turns more to face him fully, but still kneeling there. He lifts a hand, fingers outstretched, as if to touch his brother.

Dean takes a lurching step forward, and he's already mourning. He lifts his free hand, reaching out to touch Sam, to bring him back. Except Sam is no pure creature. At the last second Dean sees the way his brother's fingers are blackened and charred, dirty with blood and sin and mangled, mangled beyond recognition. 

He sees the two images there at the same time -- Sam as he is physically, just Dean's brother; and the abomination he is on the inside, marked up by demons and left to rot. Dean understands now, what he saw in his dreams. It wasn't anger. The stag wasn't punishing Sam.

Because Dean feels it all through him: an incredible pity, for this poor degraded being, taken advantage of over and over again. Sam, caught by unfair means so many years ago. It ravages Dean's heart, makes his chest feel tight. He's never loved anything more than he loves Sam right then. Ruined as he is.

Dean jerks back and raises his knife, thrusting it through Sam's chest like a sword.

Like a single, perfect horn, speared through Sam's heart.

The blood runs thick, but not bright as Dean would have imagined. It is dull and dark, infected, and Sam is gasping, holding onto Dean's wrist. Dean steadies himself, steadies his brother, the two of them collapsing together, Dean to his knees and Sam into his brother's arms, Dean keeping the knife firm in Sam's chest. The blood runs down the blade and over the grip, soaking in between Dean's fingers.

Dean holds Sam, unable to speak enough to comfort, and the blood is dripping into the snow. Sam holds on for precious few seconds, breathing in uneven jerks until his chest seizes, goes tight, then still.

Dean pulls the knife out, tossing it aside, and he is cradling Sam's corpse for the second time.

All around them, under them, the blood drips through the world and into the next one. 

There is no miracle. Dean's not expecting one, because this wasn't about getting his brother back. It was about ending this. This whole fucked up cycle of deals and counter deals, ending this messy story of angels and demons, and giving Sam some fucking _peace_. To not be this wandering monster, a blight upon the earth.

Because Dean remembers that twelve year old, that perfect fucking kid, and Sam never deserved this. Never asked for it.

And he would never have wanted to let his body go on so long after all his goodness was gone. He'd asked Dean, years ago, to end it before things went bad. To _save_ him, from all the fucked up things that people had done to him. Dean hadn't gotten it then, hadn't understood how badly his brother had been torn down on the inside, but he gets it now. He finally gets it.

_'If I don't get the chance to tell you--When it's over, after it's over... I love you. And I've missed you so much. And I'm sorry for...anything. Everything. And it's okay. It's okay. It's okay.'_

He clutches Sam's body, feels it loose and lax in his arms, flesh still soft and giving. Dean bites his lips, face tight and pulled in. The forest around them is silent as the sun begins to rise, the sky lightening.

There are no bird calls, no rustle of half decayed leaves as small forest animals skitter through the underbrush. No gentle crack of wood under the weight of snow, no muffled sounds of life. The whole world goes still, Dean alone and at its center, and the dawn hangs motionless and pensive.

Then, softly, there is a hesitant crunch, snow compressing under weight.

There is another, and then one more -- the ponderous sound of footsteps.

Dean looks up, unwinding his expression to open his eyes, and he sees, for the first time, the unicorn. 

It is standing in the snow, one leg extended out in a step, white, cloven hoof pressed into the deepening drifts. It is looking at Dean, looking straight at him and through him all at once, seeing every inch of him. Everything good and bad and in between. He is a small and unimportant being in front of it, in the fantastic light of its permanence.

Each leg is stick slender, finely crafted porcelain, the gentle bulge of each joint so elegant. Its body is small, smaller than Dean would ever have expected and sea foam white, its mane running down its neck and over the length of its back, drifting in the air like ether. Its head rests on a long, arched neck, and there is a beard of silk spun hair dangling from its chin. The forest follows it, watching it, as stunned by it as Dean is and just as in love. In the center of its forehead is a starburst pattern, and from that, the horn.

Dean is caught by the sight of it, completely done in by its indelible beauty and grace. Even Sam and Sam's death are small and distant things before it.

He begins to realize why every face in this town looks haunted. Why Melissa cried. Why Deborah Ostrand occasionally glimpses great insight, even in the face of her own inability to understand. Why anyone who has ever been close to a unicorn is unable to return to how they were before, some distant magic left on them, fundamentally changed.

Dean knows that if he could, he would live in this creature's light forever, and he wishes only to be near it, wherever it goes. It is color beyond color, light beyond light, and its horn is long and proud, a dusty spiral of something more than stone or metal or keratin. It lowers its head, the fabric of the world moving with its mane, its eyes something that Dean can see but not comprehend.

The tip of its horn touches Sam's lips, the barest brush, and Dean would give anything to be in his place, to be touched by the unicorn, but without anyone telling him he knows he can't reach out. The touch of a unicorn can only ever be given, never taken.

In that moment, Sam breathes again, and so does Dean. 

He feels Sam gasp and feels him choke, taking a moment to even things out, and Dean is saying _'Sammy, Sammy'_ still supporting him, hand moving up to his brother's cheek. Sam's eyes are new and markedly different, fresh in a way that Dean hasn't seen since he was holding a little baby in his arms, looking down into those hazel marked blue rings. Something he hasn't seen since before Sam was six months old and there was a fire that changed everything.

And all that blood, all that old, crusted demon blood is soaking into the snow, cut out of him by Dean's knife.

Dean looks up, incapable of thanking but needing to. Except the unicorn is gone with a flick, tail brushing through the air and taking the last falling snowflakes with it. It dances over the ground, hooves barely touching, its body a shimmer of light, its brief call the sound of a bell ringing clear. The sight is almost too much, Dean's heart shuddering in his chest, suddenly and shocking _aware_ of his own soul, feeling it moving inside of his body. He thought he knew what heartbreak felt like, when his father died for him. When Sam went down on his knees in the mud and passed away before Dean could even say goodbye. When he realized he could never be a good man for Lisa, a good father for Ben.

He never knew heartbreak, not until the unicorn vanishes into the stark lines of the forest, and Dean sobs.

Even in just a moment, his entire world has been changed, and he knows that he will never be able to see it as he did before he saw the unicorn.

And he knows, all through him, that he will never see the creature again.

For awhile, he just cries, and he doesn't know when, or how, but his position with Sam switches, his brother holding him, keeping him from crumpling. He feels that grief, but it isn't all he feels. He's suddenly aware of how incredibly mortal he is, how stunningly finite and plain, just one small actor, not half as great and significant as he once imagined, and it takes awhile before he can draw breath without his chest clenching.

He has never been happier than he is right now.

Nor sadder.

His head is leaned against the spur of Sam's shoulder, his eyes shut, and he just lets the cool air calm him. The shimmer flick of the unicorn is tattooed on the backs of his eyelids, and always will be, that moment of breathless beauty too much for his poor human eyes to ever get over. His tears fade, and he doesn't sleep, but he feels apart from the world around him, a songbird playing out its melody not too far away -- days now, since he heard one.

"Dean, look," Sam says, with something so painfully close to childlike wonder in his voice.

It scares Dean, forces him to hope and he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to open his eyes, afraid he'll see anything less than everything he wants. He wants his brother back from Hell, no matter how troubled he is. No matter how crazy or messed up, no matter how burdened with problems. He'd take him back now, even if Sam came with sinful destiny or demon blood. He'd take him back, even if Sam carried dreams of college and normalcy, dreams of weddings and kids and nothing to do with his family. All the things that Dean could never accept about his brother, he'd take them all. Any of them. Dean just wants his brother back -- a wish he's been making for decades now, for so many varied reasons. But he draws in a breath, hearing Sam speak again ( _'Dean. Dean,_ look') and his eyelids flutter open, wet and heavy. 

The world is blurry, for a moment, and he's looking down, looking at the stain of demon blood in the snow, darker and browner than he's used to blood being. No longer inside of Sam's body but gone, gone for good and purged.

_'There's nothing that could undo something like this. Not unless something as ruined could be restored.'_

Sam's body is clean in way it hasn't been since before Dad thrust him into Dean's arms, telling him to get out of the house. But Dean wants more than just that. Sam is more than the package he comes in.

Dean raises his head, eyes skipping over the light on Sam's face. Sam's eyes shift back and forth, gaze flickering about, as if all the world were new and reborn. The magic of the unicorn's presence is fading, but there's still enough there, just enough, for Dean to see Sam's soul. See it shifting inside of him, joined, finally, with a body that deserves it, its perfect goodness.

Sam smiles like he means it, and Dean turns his head to see, to look wherever it is that Sam wants him to look, as if there could be anything better than what's already in front of him.

Behind them, only a few feet away is a poplar tree, tall branches stretched up towards the sky, crooked fingers reaching out to where the clouds aren't. And on the top, at the highest point, Dean sees a single leaf, furling out and tender in the crisp, cold air.

Dean feels himself come back into the world suddenly, like a slingshot snapping back, his fearful hope breaking and giving way to acceptance, to the beginnings of joy. No longer wishing, but instead having, something real and realized.

Something immutable, like the first green of spring coming in before his eyes.


End file.
